


Incandescent Light

by swooning



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes, written following LDYB 2. Includes the companion piece, "Comparing Notes." </p><p>It's all between them, but it's all in their heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strange Bedfellows

**Author's Note:**

> There were a few different inspirations for this fic. The first was a persistent notion I’ve had about the lighting on BSG. And the second was ficklemuse’s lovely ficlet featuring Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’ Which reminded me of a Dickinson poem that I thought set the tone I was looking for perfectly, because I’m such a hopeless romantic:
> 
> I have no life but this,  
> To lead it here;  
> Nor any death, but lest  
> Dispelled from there;
> 
> Nor tie to earths to come,  
> Nor action new,  
> Except through this extent,  
> The realm of you.

Baltar was a puppet, and it showed. A marionette, actually, Laura corrected herself; you didn’t have to look far to see who was jerking his strings. Jerking a few other things too, perhaps, judging by the interaction between the “leader” of the humans and the blonde Cylon the others called Caprica Six. Baltar, she noticed, never called her by any name at all.   
  
He was clearly miserable, these days, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for him. He had saved her life, and she would always be grateful on some level for that, but he had so clearly, literally, made his own bed to lie in. And now they were all lying in it with him, sleepless and unsatisfied.   
  
Politics. It did, indeed, make strange bedfellows. Which was why Laura was now cozy, though of course not literally in bed, with the likes of Tom Zarek, who was one of the few humans with experience in blowing up unwanted government buildings and that sort of thing. He and Samuel Anders, late of the Caprican resistance, turned out to make quite an effective guerilla team. Along with Tyrol and his band of merry miners, they had already wrought quite a bit of havoc with the puppet regime. She should leave it alone, of course, she should steer clear of them and all their doings, let them all reap the consequences of choosing Baltar, but she couldn’t. It was a moral imperative, it was the survival of humanity, it was their way of life… and besides, the Cylons had closed the school, and that just  _pissed her off_.   
  
So. Seditious talk with Zarek, he of the over-intense eyes and the physical presence like a palpable wave of charisma. More than a bit creepy, and unfortunately serving only to remind her of another pair of piercing eyes, another person she could feel walking into a room without ever turning her head, not creepy at all, and where the hell  _was_  he, anyway? If he didn’t come back soon, she felt she might rise off the planet in a righteous vengeance and simply surge through the ether to wherever he was, so she could throttle him for leaving them all down here. The Gods would just transport her  _right there_  to do it. She would be that enraged. Grateful somebody had escaped, but why did he have to leave? It didn’t need to make any sense.  
  
Not for the first time, when she thought along these lines, the next thing to pop into her mind was:  _Laura, you really should have frakked him while you had the chance._  
  
Fine. She would not miss another chance. She would do it, she would hop into bed with the infuriatingly absent Admiral and take him places he had only ever dreamed of going, just as soon as he  _came back_ for them all. She would do it.   
  
And  _then_  she would throttle him.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
He could have kicked himself.   
  
A Battlestar was a big place. Plenty of room to hide one medium-sized woman. If he had made a point of it, had a reason to ask her up now and again, she might have been on board. And then at least they would be in this together, instead of him out here with nobody but Lee to talk to about the big-ticket items. Like what the hell they were going to do. Laura would have had an idea. Maybe not a good one, but she’d have been determined, and that would have been something. She would have been on his side, anyway, another voice of reason to argue Lee out of his own stupid position, which involved writing off the New Capricans and starting for Earth again.   
  
Sleeping with her, that would have been a good excuse. That would have been believable. Not that Baltar would have liked it, but he wouldn’t have been able to do much about it; he didn’t exactly have the loving support of the military. Then Adama could have had the benefit of her mind  _and_  her body, which he found he missed almost equally some days. The other days, it was mostly mind, the part of her with which he was most familiar; but he had certainly done his share of surreptitious ogling, and felt he knew enough about her body to give the mind a run for its money.  
  
When he thought about her, which was often, he told himself it was only to be expected. He'd been single, or as good as single, a long time; she had slipped in under his Dradis because, unlike most women, she really hadn't been trying. That caught him off guard, that she didn’t seem interested. But he liked the look of her, had done that even when he still found her unbearable, and it had always puzzled him. She wasn’t his type. He had never been into brunettes or redheads, never been into the intellectual type. His wives were both cool, petite blondes, both highly groomed, freshly pressed, exercised to a fashionable firmness, and outgoing by nature. They stayed at home, they participated in the Officers’ Wives’ Club, and he honestly did not know what they did with the rest of their time. Trophy wives, if he thought about it, although he hadn’t seen them that way at the time. He had let himself be caught by them, turned on the charm and then let them do all the work, and enjoyed the fireworks while they lasted. Once it had all fizzled out, which he never really understood and actually felt slightly betrayed by, he found more excuses to go away, stay away, easy enough to do in his line of work. Going, going… gone.   
  
But Laura… why? She had never pursued him, the quality he usually found attractive in a woman. He had never turned on the charm, because she didn’t seem to find him charming. They had been too busy arguing, plotting, strategizing, occasionally even laughing or crying, to have time left over for flirting. But over time, there grew to be something  _else_. Some quality of togetherness, something he hadn’t even realized until she was too sick to ignore the issue of her illness any more; something he had suddenly felt dread at the thought of losing. But she was dying, so he called it friendship, dear friendship, and left it at that. They had started finishing one another’s sentences one day, but the next she would be gone, so there was nothing to be done about it.   
  
Until she recovered, an unexpected complication in his brilliant plan. But after that, the right moment just hadn’t presented itself. Billy’s death, the hybrid baby, the election… their descent to the planet. It would have been a misery-loves-company frak at best, and that just hadn’t seemed appealing.   
  
But in retrospect, it could have been damned useful.   
  
If she were here with him, his mind would be so much clearer, since he would no longer spend all his time worrying about what the Cylons might be doing to her, if she were even still alive.   
  
Yes. Useful. That’s what it would have been.


	2. Onions

She no longer remembered or cared when it had started, or what had started it. That didn’t matter. When you are the President of the Twelve Colonies, there is no good time to start daydreaming about having sex with the leader of your armed forces. But really, Laura asked herself, who else did she have to fantasize about? The young pilots, like Apollo, were just that: young. And good-looking, but essentially bland. Not yet seasoned, and she had already tasted those dishes and developed a palate far more sophisticated than their ability to satisfy.   
  
Layers, layers. To keep her busy brain occupied, to distract her from herself, layers like the ubiquitous tanks she knew he always had on under his jacket. Layers like the way he stacked his books, because he had long since run out of shelves, and because he simply liked his books around him that way. Like the way he approached his ship, a pragmatic technological tool of warcraft, a place of business, a marvel of engineering, a piece of living history, a home, a romantic vessel to sail into the unknown like a tall ship of old… He could kill a man with the same bare hands he used to construct a model of such a vessel, a thing of infinite delicacy and care. How could she not, in her lonely cabin in the chilly night of space, begin to dwell on what  _else_ such hands might accomplish? What  _else_  he might pursue with such infinite delicacy and care, such force, such singleminded purpose, from so very many angles?   
  
And so it had developed like a bad habit, to ease her solitude with thoughts of the Admiral. Of Bill. At first, it was awkward to contrast these lurid imaginings with their formal dealings, but soon she grew used to the subtle sense of power, of amusement, she felt when she met with him, argued with him, knowing that in her nightly fantasy he would always be entirely her own creature. Until she had gotten too sick to care about such things, and had assumed the habit broken; the irony, that he no longer haunted her dreams and daydreams, by the time he actually kissed her. But he came back… as did she. She couldn’t keep him out of her mind for long. She really didn’t try.   
  
It had been all she had, on New Caprica. Baltar would never have allowed a relationship, and she never tempted Bill with word too large, and he was gone once the Cylons came. But he visited her mind nightly, sometimes daily too, with a regularity and a heat that was too suspiciously convenient. Laura was not a young thing, she knew herself well enough. She knew that the _idea_  of Bill was sustaining her, warming her nights and her heart, much more so than the  _actuality_  of Bill probably would. It was the fantasy of him that kept her going. And now that she had lost the rest of what she had, lost her home, her planet, her lover, her job, and everything else to the Cylons… her fantasy life was the one thing they could not take away. The temptation to retreat into it utterly was, at times, almost too hard to resist as she knew she must. But she could not make herself quit cold turkey; it was an addiction now, no mere habit. She had just enough in the real world to keep her hanging on; she found the control she always had, to do what she must for herself and her species.   
  
Harmless, it had never been. She did not fool herself. She was a thrill-seeker, and this was the nature of the thrill she sought, to see how far she could torture herself before she either cracked or grew weary of the game. With Adar, the previous record-holder, the fantasy stage had lasted three months before she gave it up, let him catch her, because it had lost its charm by then and she thought she might as well. She had thought those three months of daydreaming a romantic indulgence beyond all reckoning, unprecedented, surely never to be repeated. But Bill… Bill was different. No denying that. It had been over two years, now, and he was no longer even available to fuel the fire, and yet he was still there. She saw him in people’s faces on the street, heard his laugh and looked around to see if he were there, and dreamed about being held, being in his arms on board the Galactica. And if she had never pursued him, never sought to test her fantasies against the man himself, it was in part because she suspected he, unlike all the others, might actually have as much power over her in real life as he did in her dreams. Not just that he would not disappoint – she knew he wouldn’t – but that he would  _fulfill_ , and that the fulfillment would subsume her.   
  
There was a reason Laura was in her fifties and still unmarried. She thought too much.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
The undressing dream was one of his favorites. He remembered the first time he’d had it, the night after the presidential debates. He awoke with a pounding heart and spoiled sheets, and cracked himself up thinking about how unlikely and unbecoming a wet dream was at his age. Lords, it had been  _too_  long. Then he thought about the word “unbecoming” and, like a teenager, cracked himself up again.   
  
In the undressing dream, they were always standing right next to his rack. He would always start with her hair, combing his fingers through it, and then lifting it up away from her throat and shoulders to reveal her neck. Scrumptious, like a column of… something good to eat, he wasn’t sure what. He often thought of food, with her; of eating. So he dipped his head – she was always a little shorter in the dream – and tasted her skin from ear to collarbone, savoring with his tongue, testing her texture with gentle teeth and soothing lips. He loved the part when she shivered and brought her hands up to his elbows; that was when he would start to get hard.   
  
She always had a suit on in the dream, and it sort of annoyed him that he couldn’t tell which one it was. Maybe it was none of the real ones, anyway, not that it mattered. The jacket was unbuttoned, and would sort of fall away, and then she would be left in just a shirt. He never caught what happened to the skirt or the shoes. The shirt was her pink one, the crisp, starchy, pink one that looked almost like a man’s shirt, and the tails came just to the tops of her thighs, so about an inch of white silk panty peeked out from underneath. This wasn’t something he actually saw in the dream, just something his dream-self was aware of. And she wore it with the cuffs rolled back a few times, and unbuttoned far down enough that her bra peeked out when she moved. Which he knew would only ever happen in a dream; she was usually fairly circumspect about cleavage, he had discovered to his sometime disappointment.   
  
She always watched him, hands still lightly cupping his arms, as he slowly unbuttoned the shirt. One button, two… the bra, more white silk and lace, now plainly visible. Three, four, her navel, felt with a fingertip the moment before her stomach retracted from the tickling pressure. Five, the top of the underwear, a slightly rough edge of lace followed by six, the smooth silk covering her mons. A moment to appreciate the glimpses of her, now framed so perfectly by the open shirt, before he lifted it from her shoulders and it, too, fell to the floor with a whisper of fabric against skin.   
  
 _Gods_. Then he would look back at her face, and she would be smiling at him, that little half-smile she got when she was thinking something but not saying it. And he would start to say something, he wasn’t sure what. Before he could, the dream would shift, she would still be giving him that enigmatic smile, but they would be in his rack. She would be under him, no clothes on either of them. Clearly, his dreaming mind had less patience than his everyday one. He would always think he should  _feel_  more; he was pressed so close against her, was aware of her breasts, her hips, her hands on his back, but it wasn’t real enough. Still, he would be hard, achingly so, dangerously close to climax, and on that first memorable occasion of the dream, he had felt her hand on his cock at this point, guiding him into place. The second he felt that moist, hot, welcome between her parted thighs, he’d lost it, waking up to a wet spot and a bout of self-deprecating laughter.   
  
That one time, he had felt that if they could join and stay merged long enough, he would be able to strip away all the layers she affected, and that he might actually get down to something he had not known before, then further and further down, as far inside as he could reach, which would never be far enough with her, he suspected. Knowing her that way still wouldn’t amount to knowing her at all, but the effort would definitely be worth it. In the dream, he always thought this.   
  
After that first time, he always woke up just before her hand got there. Usually hard as a rock, ready to rip a pillow to shreds with frustration, having to decide whether to will the erection away or go into the head and take care of it. Because he had peeled away, pulled one coat of armor after another off her, and just when he was about to finally penetrate her defenses, touch the heart of what she was… gone. And worse now, because she might really be gone, and he would never get to find out what she felt like.   
  
Bill had a love/hate relationship with the undressing dream.


	3. The Things We Miss the Most

She tried not to think about all the things there were to miss. Some on New Caprica made a sport of it, a competition: who could be the most homesick? Whose heartstrings were strung the tightest? Laura tried to avoid that, knowing the danger of dwelling on warm bubble baths one could not have, the purr of a cat under the fingers, the china cup one’s grandmother had once owned. With enough will power, she could turn her mind away. She could focus on the here and now, the little comforts she was able to find, and not become mired in what she could no longer have.  _She_  could do this, even if nobody else seemed able to.   
  
Hubris would, of course, be her tragic downfall; she was not immune, as she imagined she had made herself through sheer determination. She just hadn’t missed something badly enough yet, and when she did, she became as susceptible as anyone else to craving that thing, mourning that thing, falling into maudlin melancholy over that single, irreplaceable, missing thing.   
  
Skin on skin. It had come to Laura in a flash, one day, when she was trying to take a sponge bath without freezing off anything important. A keenly urgent pang, like a tangible need, a hunger to feel somebody’s naked body against her own. How long had it been, since the last time she felt that? At least a week before the trip to Galactica, the invasion, maybe more. So… years. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but lately it was the salt in the open wound that was the Cylon occupation.   
  
Once it had crept into her forebrain, she found she could not banish it. It caught her unawares, forced her to cry against her will and better judgment, it tortured her. The Cylons had not, but this one non-thing had, and it had become an aching everyday feature in her consciousness.   
  
Worse now, because she was really allowed to talk to no one. They did not call it house arrest – tent arrest – but it was exactly that. The Centurion outside the tent flap was the big clue. She could go for water, go out to wash her clothes or get food or attend public functions and speak to no one, she could even manage the occasional shower in the public wash facility. But her big metal buddy was always there, silent and watching her with his one… looking-thing. Why did they bother? Where would she go? Where could any of them go?   
  
She found ways, they all did. She passed notes in her laundry, picked up replies with her dry goods, whispered to Starbuck or Maya in the shower. But it was not real contact. For all intents and purposes, she was completely alone now, and the yearning to communicate was agonizing. The craving to feel her skin pressed against another human body was, she imagined, just an extension of that yearning. A concentrated version, giving her the ridiculous notion that if she accomplished that one act she would feel somehow restored to herself, through that simple yet essential connection with another person.   
  
Ridiculous. And moot.  
  
But she could dream; that, at least, was left to her. She slept whenever she got the chance. Lately her dreams of Bill had become ever more centered upon this one state of being, lying naked and entwined with him, his sturdy limbs wrapped in and around her too-thin ones, breathing one another’s air, a world of touch. A world of skin warming skin feeling skin loving skin. Being humans, together.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
Head.  
  
Bill missed head.  
  
He missed getting it, he missed giving it, he missed everything about it. He got depressed every time he thought about how low his odds were of ever participating in it again. Because, damn it, it was just a lot of fun. Good, clean, fun, as he somehow always thought of it; entertaining for everyone. Pack a lunch, stay awhile, consider taking up permanent residence. A perennial favorite. If he’d been able to pick one thing  _not_  to lose in the Cylon invasion, he probably would have picked oral sex.   
  
Or not, because at the time, he hadn’t considered the possibility that the end of the world also meant the end of the head.   
  
He’d be willing to bet the former President gave one hell of a blow job.   
  
Yes, okay, she was refined, modest, a schoolteacher, respectable government official, all those things. Everything she created herself to be suggested she was not the type of woman a man should be considering in those terms. But there is a point at which most men consider  _every_  woman in those terms at some level. And for Bill, that point had been when the Blackbird was christened. When she had taken the champagne bottle, inspected the label, and then hauled off as if to do the thing properly, he had been as taken in as everyone else until she pulled it at the last instant. And in that one split-second, he saw her eyes, and realized he had been missing a very great deal about Laura Roslin. If the time had been a different one, she would have done it, smashed the bottle to hell against the prow of some ship, and gloried in the explosion of glass and light and effervescent wine. She would have laughed while doing it; she was laughing at them all right then, really, because she knew she had flirted with blowing her cover but maintained it at the last moment. Did anyone else even suspect? Did they even think to look that closely? He rather hoped not. He liked to think he was the only one.  
  
He had to admit, she was a little scary. More than a little scary, at times, especially on those occasions when her intensity made his own look like merest whimsy. But what is life without a little risk? And what potential gain from that risk, to look down and see that amazing creature curled naked at his feet or between his legs, her expressive lips and so-precise tongue employed in paying him the closest attention possible… and that hair, like a banked fire, tumbling around her face and adding its feathery caresses.   
  
But even more tempting, more distracting, was his plan for reciprocity. Between  _her_  thighs, enjoying the sweet-and-sour he would lick from her folds, finding things to nibble and things to suck, and exactly how best to employ his hands. He would pillage her gently, then none too gently, and catalogue each sound she gave him in return, until he was a veritable walking encyclopedia of ways to make Laura Roslin whimper and moan and come. And by the time they actually frakked, she would be trembling, weak and soft with pleasure, so open to him that he would sink into her without pause.   
  
All that, he thought he could happily do forever.   
  
And he would… if she cooperated by still being alive when he got back to New Caprica to rescue her.


	4. Incandescent Light

A dream in progress:  
  
 _In his cabin, because of the scent. Leather and cigars, a spicy musk, and old books. She was standing, looking at the couch, and could tell he was behind her, perhaps just setting a drink on his desk. To free his hands, which stole around her waist, pulling her gently back into his embrace. To the spicy aroma, add a sharp tang of ambrosia, first in the air and then on his lips as he sought and found her mouth with his. Lips gentle on lips, then a gradual evolution of intention until tongues tasted, hands sought flesh, and the air was filled with wordless murmurings, the language their passion taught them._  
  
In his cabin, because of the literature. The books alone were worth the price of admission. She glanced to the floor, bowing her head to the insistent pressure of lips at the nape of her neck, and she saw the stack of books by the hatch, and then her eyes drifted shut before she had a chance to wonder if she had read all those already. When he had had his fill of nuzzling under her hair, of teasing at her breasts with dream-touches, never quite enough, he gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him, and as she opened her eyes she saw books again, over his shoulder. This many books, she had to be in the right place. And then she met his eyes, and he looked puzzled, annoyed almost, as if she were a problem he couldn’t solve. He walked towards her, encouraging her retreat, like dancing, until she fetched up against the couch and could retreat no further.  
  
In his cabin, because of the couch, onto which he lowered her, the better to solve her. He proceeded methodically, unbuttoning her shirt, tracing delicate trails of sensation down her sternum and abdomen. Unhooked the catch on her trousers, pulled down the zipper, still watching her face. It was his eyes that turned her on, as much as what his hands were doing. They were blue and cool, his eyes, they were setting her on fire, they were offering a relief from the burning.   
  
In his cabin, because of the colors. As if he knew his eyes should be the only cool thing here, the only oasis to escape the heat, he had warmed all the rest, covered as much of the gunship gray as possible. She was surrounded by warm, by the soft sienna of the couch, ochres and tans and cordovans on book spines, reds and golds of wood and wool, and all the colors of earth and fire rendered in oil on the wall. She felt it more than saw it all, the warmth that only his cabin allowed, this heat that defied frigid space, the glow in which their now-naked bodies sported in joy.  
  
In his cabin, because of the light. The one place in the fleet that felt like a room in a house, the one refuge from the flattening, aquamarine omnipresence of fluorescent, heartless glow of halogen, harsh uplighting of tactical tables. He kissed his way down to her breasts, suckled and fondled there, heating her further, and the mica-shaded highlights on his brown skin were all incandescence, warm and soft as his tongue on her nipple, revealing as her response when he slipped a finger inside her.   
  
In his cabin, because it was home, and she came to his caress, gasping aloud…  
  
…and woke up cold, and crying, and so homesick she thought her heart would break.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
He had never been one to go out much. When he was home, he wanted to be  _home_. He had always liked the familiarity of it, needed the disconnect between work and the rest of his life, and between the rest of his life and his own, private time. And once it became clear that the Galactica was home for good – once he and Anne had separated permanently, and he needed somewhere to keep all his stuff – he had taken immediate steps to make his quarters look as little like a battleship cabin as possible. Culling out what he really liked, not bothering to store the rest, he hid the hard floors with carpets that had once graced the floors of his family home, bought the biggest leather couch he could fit in the space, and found the largest picture he could reasonably hang on the wall. Caroline had bought it for him, Anne had hated it, so it had spent years in the attic. Now he had it back, and it helped to cover just that bit more of the gray.   
  
The books had been the hardest. They wouldn’t let him have more shelves built in, and he had long since overfilled the few bookcases available. Finally, he realized it would simply not be possible to contain all the rest he couldn’t bear to part with, so he had ditched the boxes and let the volumes wander where they would. They mostly stayed out of the way, he found, and ended up in little formations around the edges of things. Vied for space with the knick-knacks, but he didn’t mind the clutter. It was not as if it could get any worse, anyway; there were no more places to acquire things.   
  
All that had happened over the course of a few months, but it had still looked somehow wrong to him, and he didn’t realize why until one short leave, when he happened across a lamp in an antique store, a simple column with a squared-off mica shade. It struck him as such a warm thing, like a window onto a room with a fire in the fireplace, or like candlelight on a dinner table. And so he had purchased it, and another just like it, and soon had amassed enough similar lamps to completely supplant the fluorescent lights in his quarters, and  _that_  finally made it look like home. Incandescent light. He could walk out of the cold blue and gray glare of the ship, and into this little cave of golden light and soft brown leather, and be home.   
  
He had no idea what he would do when he ran out of bulbs.   
  
The fringe benefit of the warm light was also that it  _felt_  warmer, something he appreciated more, the fewer crew members remained on Galactica. It was chilly out in space, and psychology could help you or hurt you there. The light, the shades, the distressed butteriness of the couch, all conspired to help one feel warmer. And the subtle fringe of lamplight around a nimbus of auburn hair, or the golden hue that lit one half of a pale face, throwing the other into subtle shadow… the effects of this light on his memory were legion. Even in his dreams, he always left the lights on. He wanted to see Laura in that light again, and not waste it this time; he wanted to see  _all_ of her, to reassure himself she had really come back to him. He wanted to bring her back into the warm circle of light that was his home, keep her and protect her there, and never let her want for that light again.


	5. The Moment of Truth (or Dare)

After all the times they had each pictured the rescue of humanity, the whole thing felt oddly anticlimactic. Mundane and inconvenient, really, because there they all were, crammed into far too few ships, and the first day and night were more about sorting out who slept where than anything else. The resistance and fighting gave way to a numbness aboard Galactica, a dreamy convalescence. Laura assumed it was this way all over the fleet; however, she had been shuttled to Galactica, so she could only vouch for conditions there. Quiet. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.   
  
He had seen her first, where she stood holding onto one of the many wounded, helping him to stand until space could be cleared for him to be triaged. Just one of the hundreds there, except that it was  _her_. She had made it, she was alive. And he saw that she already had followers lining up to offer assistance, to receive her blessing, to atone. As well they should. He heard “President Roslin” as he passed through the throng, and was not at all surprised.   
  
Bill had brushed her elbow with his fingertips there on the landing deck, barely getting her attention, and then moved on to help someone else. She felt her own smile in response, somewhat shy, the palpable silence between them, and she wondered what had happened to her resolve. But then she caught his eye as he stepped past, and a different story was told. One that had no words yet, but could already speak of longing, of waiting, of despair and of hope. It would keep a little longer.  
  
And so she worked on, helping see to the needy, tend to her flock, while he returned to commanding the fleet. The hours mounted into a day, before everyone had found a temporary bunk and the humans were safely clear of the Cylons for at least a short time.   
  
He had only just gotten back to his quarters, taken off his jacket and shoes and settled down with a drink, when he heard the soft knocking on the hatch. It was ajar, as usual, and he stood up just as she stepped through. In the same grungy t-shirt and torn black trousers she was rescued in, with dark circles under her eyes, and smelling about like one might expect of somebody who had just spent a week on the run in rain-drenched woods, followed by a panicked trip in a cramped transport, and finishing up with a full day wedged into a hangar bay with hundreds of other similarly situated people. Bill didn’t notice, or at least didn’t care. She was  _alive_.   
  
Laura’s strength – and strength of purpose – had seen her as far as the threshold, and no further. She felt rooted to that spot, only her eyes moving to take in the sight of Bill walking towards her, here in his quarters, real, and not a dream. The warm light was even more enticing than she had remembered or dreamed, but it could not draw her further in. Bill, however, could. And did. He stopped in front of her, studied her face for a moment, then closed the remaining distance between them and pulled her into his arms, swinging the hatch shut behind her.   
  
Although she went willingly, she was suddenly too unsure of herself to know how to feel. Living off the dream of him for so long, a dream she had to remind herself had  _no_  basis in reality, made it a little hard to grasp that he really was  _there_. Solid. Warm. His arms held her a little too tightly, and it was good. She felt she might fly apart or fly away otherwise, and it seemed he thought so, too. Slowly, gradually, she let her arms wrap further around him, until they encircled his waist, and her face was buried in his shoulder. Solid. Real. Smelling like a boy, like a man, but there was also that faint hint of spice around him, just when she had started to think it existed only in her mind.   
  
After a time neither of them could reckon, he relaxed one arm’s hold, and brought his hand to the back of her head, resting it at the nape of her neck and working his fingers gently through her hair. His head rested against hers, and he still held her tightly enough to feel each breath, feel when she began to ease against him. Too good to be true, but there she was. He wished he could do something more definitive, claim her and prove to himself that she was no dream. But they had no history for that, and even this particular hug was teetering on the edge of what friendship usually called for. Even in circumstances as unusual as these.   
  
Reluctantly, then, he released her, and was surprised to feel her arms tighten around him in response. He pulled away a little, just far enough to see her face. “Glad to see you, too.”  
  
She chuckled, gave him a wry smile, and loosened her hands a bit, although she did not let go entirely. She was loath to do so, in truth, for a reason she knew to be irrational; she had expected the dream, the instant ferocity of desire, despite her logical understanding that her response had to do with  _her_  and the fantasy version of Bill she had created, and that this was the real Bill, who was no relation. The fireworks were not forthcoming. But she had a good poker face. She hid her disappointment, smiled at him, steeled herself to let go.   
  
But then he smiled back, and cupped her cheek with his hand, impossibly tender… and there it was, it all swept over her in a rush, all at once, and it was  _real_ , and there was no way she could hide  _that_. He saw it all, her pupils dilating slightly, lips parting with the intake of breath, a hint of a blush that started at her cheeks and swept upward to her forehead, downward to her chest. His eyes followed it there, he couldn’t help himself, and at its terminus somewhere beneath her shirt the rush of blood prompted her nipples into announcing themselves; his eyebrows lifted involuntarily before he could catch himself and raise his eyes back to hers, where propriety would suggest they belonged.   
  
Hers were closed now, though, and she had the vaguest hint of an “Oh, frak…” expression on her lovely, guarded face. She was biting her lower lip. Just a bit, but he knew the look. At least he hoped he knew the look; he hoped like hell he was reading the situation correctly, that it was not just wishful thinking or flat-out delusion that made him think she was responding in  _that way._ To  _him_.   
  
He couldn’t help himself; he let his thumb stray from her cheek to her still-bitten lip, and pressed down softly at the tortured flesh until she relinquished it. It was reddened there, and he stroked the trace of an angry toothprint a few times, until he realized he was really just hung up on the soft skin of her lips, wondering what they would feel like under his own. And realized her expression had gone from pained to enraptured, her eyes still closed but all lines softened, her mouth curving sweetly into a smile.   
  
“This is dreaming,” she whispered regretfully, slurring a little against his thumb. She clutched at his waist, leaning into his hand with a sigh of bittersweet bliss.  
  
“Hmm. No...” Deciding the signs were, on the whole, quite promising, he ventured to see what would happen if he moved his hand; he used the backs of his fingertips to brush against the stretch of her neck from her ear downward, ending with a stroke along her collarbone, just under the edge of her shirt’s neckline. Rewarding… her breath quickened, her hands slid further back around him. “Why… is it something you’ve been dreaming about?” He almost choked the words back, unable to believe he’d actually  _said_  that.  _Frak, Bill, a lame pickup line? Now, of all times? With her? What if--_  
  
She had just… nodded.   
  
Just a tiny nod, a shy nod, but it was unmistakable.   
  
He fell silent and still for so long Laura panicked, and opened her eyes to find him staring thoughtfully into her face. She had never felt more wide-awake, further from dreaming, than at that moment. He was  _there_. He was  _real_. And he was holding her, and did not seem inclined to let her go.   
  
“I think,” he said finally, “maybe we oughtta compare notes.”


	6. Comparing Notes

It took her a moment to grasp the significance of what Bill had just said. Then it was her turn to raise her eyebrows and grow thoughtful. They observed one another’s dawning understanding in the space of a few seconds; funny, Laura later thought, how a few wordless seconds could change things, could change  _everything_. But they had.  
  
A kiss hung there between them, and they approached it cautiously, neither one willing to break the spell that held them. It was a new thing, and they were in no position to pretend it meant anything less than it did. No position, either, to pretend their every choice did not affect the survival of their species. It was not something to do lightly. It could never be taken back. They needed to be sure they would not  _want_  to take it back.  
  
Considering all that pressure, the whole thing came off surprisingly well.   
  
They met just in the middle, hesitating for a single moment when their lips were almost touching, and then committing to the forward motion that brought them together. Very, very softly, at first, barely a kiss at all, rather the consideration of kissing. A shared breath, tasting their mingled atmosphere along with their mingled lips. And then, more assured, just a bit more, eyes fluttering shut to allow for concentration. Just the confirmation that this would be only the first in a long career of kisses. It promised to be a very, very, successful career, at that.   
  
Laura opened her eyes as they parted, and drew back to contemplate this new development. She saw Bill’s dear gargoyle face, slowly transformed by a smile. A grin, really, unabashed and wholly devastating. She felt its twin on her own face, an expression she thought she had forgotten how to make. A feeling she had nearly forgotten how to express, through long deprivation: joy.   
  
“Now what the hell are we supposed to do?” he said finally, breaking the silence.   
  
“You’ve forgotten? Okay, now I’m a little worried…”   
  
They both chuckled and, as if by agreement, stepped away, let it go for the moment. Bill kept her hand in his, drew her over to sit on the couch. She nudged her shoes off with her toes, pulled her legs up under her, and turned to face him, feeling shy, exhausted, unaccountably happy.  
  
“Thank you for the rescue, by the way.”  
  
He raised the bottle in a question, and she nodded her answer, noticing he had a second glass already on the table. He had expected her. She found she was all right with that.   
  
“Figured you were probably ready to get off the planet. Travel is broadening, and all that.”  
  
She smiled again, taking the glass with a nod of thanks. “Frak that, I was just sick of doing my own laundry.”  
  
“Does that mean you’re taking the reins again, Madame President?” His light tone belied the significance of the question. She gave some thought before answering.   
  
“For now, I think… it would probably be expedient, for me to do it. I already know the ropes, for one thing. And everyone  _expects_  me to. I’ll use that mandate while I can, the Lords know it won’t last.”  
  
“Just until Zarek decides it’s time for another circus.”  
  
“Another free and democratic election?”  
  
“There’s a difference?”  
  
They sipped at their liquor, considering the question. It was one to which there had never been, could never be, a good answer.   
  
“You have,” she said at last, “a private shower.”  
  
“Yes I do. And you clearly need it more than I do—“  
  
“—don’t start. You would not  _believe_  the week I’ve had.”  
  
They grinned at one another again, and then he stood and led her to the head, pushing her through the hatch firmly but gently with an admonishment to take as long as necessary.  
  
“And… hang on…” He squeezed past her into the tiny space, rummaged for a washcloth in the small recessed linen cabinet, and dampened a corner of it in the sink. Then he turned back around and tipped her face up with one hand, getting a better angle to wipe a particularly heavy smudge of mud from her cheek. When it was gone, he kissed the skin there tenderly, laughing as he pulled away.   
  
“That was driving me nuts. Now you have a clean spot, look.” He leaned out of the way so that she could see herself in the mirror. Which she did; but even more compelling was the sight of his profile, as he looked at her. It was a little too much, in fact, and she closed her eyes against it briefly, only to feel the rough cloth on her face again. “Hold still.”   
  
He dabbed at her other cheek, then across her forehead and the bridge of her nose, finding the process fascinating; each swipe took away another layer, leaving a soft pink-and-white trail of relatively clean skin.   
  
When she finally gathered herself enough to open her eyes again, he was plucking a leaf out of her hair. She hadn’t actually realized just how bad it was, until then. The sink, where he was wringing out the rag, was covered with grime, just from her face. The washcloth itself looked like a total write-off.   
  
“Gods,” she exclaimed, when he pulled on her hair again and produced a twig. “I’ve brought half the frakking planet with me.”  
  
“That’s the last thing we want around. Go wash it off, and if you throw your clothes out here, I’ll space them for you. Unless you want to do the honors yourself?”  
  
“No, I never want to see them again,” she answered. “I’ve already gotten rid of that sweater.  _That_  made me very happy. I plan to be in this shower until there is no more hot water left anywhere on this ship. So while you’re waiting, can you find me something else to wear?”  
  
He gave her a slightly raunchy look, which she countered with a cocked eyebrow and a pursed frown.   
  
“Yeah,” he relented. “You may have to look like an off-duty crew member for a while, though.”  
  
“As long as you remember I don’t have to follow orders.”  
  
“And I was so hoping,” he chuckled. “Enjoy the shower.”  
  
“I intend to.” She shot him another smile of almost childlike glee, then firmly shut the hatch.   
  


* * * * *

  
  
By the time she had scrubbed off the last of the New Caprican filth, Bill had returned with enough borrowed clothes to meet her immediate needs. Fashionable they might not be, but the odd assortment of civilian and uniform pieces would at least preserve her modesty.  
  
“Is there some sort of uniform storage, or a central repository for this stuff?” she asked, plucking out a faded Fleet Academy sweatshirt and some well-worn sweatpants from the pile. Of course, she was also already speculating on how to keep possession of her current garb, the thick blue terrycloth bathrobe the Admiral had thoughtfully lent her.   
  
“Not anymore, it was finally emptied out yesterday. There wasn’t much left, anyway; we weren’t stocked for deep space, after all. I got this from the pilots, they all pitched in. You’re very big with the fighter jocks, evidently. Did you know they’ve given you an honorary callsign?”  
  
“Really? I’m flattered, I think. What is it, ‘Blackbird’?”  
  
“Nope. ‘Airlock.’”  
  
She didn’t get it right away. When she did, she thought about it another long moment before deciding she might as well like it. Take it in the spirit in which it was given. The spirit in which she sincerely  _hoped_  it was given.   
  
“Ah, the airlock. The real reason I decided to be President again,” she quipped.   
  
“I suspected as much.”  
  
“The clothing thing is going to be critical. I’ll need to add it to the list.” She glazed over a bit, clearly contemplating just how long that list must already be.  
  
Bill took her hands gently, folding them more firmly around the borrowed sweats. “Laura. Worry about getting yourself dressed, first, then worry about everyone else.”  
  
She sighed heavily, trying to shed the burden for at least a moment. “Say that again,” she said with a hint of a smile.  
  
“What? Worry about getting –“  
  
“No…”  
  
It took him a few seconds. Then his expression altered subtly in the space of a heartbeat, charging the atmosphere between them as he spoke again. “Laura.”  
  
When her eyes met his, pleased, and amused, and…  _interested_ , it suddenly hit home to them both that she was standing there in nothing but his bathrobe, a factor that heightened the tension considerably.   
  
“You should get dressed,” Bill said with evident regret, “and get some sleep. We could  _both_  use some sleep.”  
  
“That’s very responsible of you, Bill,” she said a bit coyly. Then she added crisply, “Chicken.”  
  
His eyes widened in frank disbelief, and with a speed and ferocity that should not have surprised her, but did, he had swept her up and then pinned her beneath him on the couch, giving her no time to protest before taking her mouth in a kiss that stopped just short of punishing, as it robbed her of her breath and her thought, of anything that did not involve kissing him back. Which she did, with a certain enthusiasm, once she had caught up with events.  
  
When he finally relented, they lay there trembling and breathing harshly at each other. After a moment Bill pulled away suddenly, shakily, and sat at the far end of the couch with a curse.   
  
Laura sat up, too, and contemplated him for a few seconds with a rumpled and bemused expression. “That was… precipitate. So. Don’t call you a chicken unless I want to get jumped. Got it. Anything else I should know?”  
  
He looked over and saw that she was smirking at him. Then he looked further, saw that their exertions had pulled his robe hopelessly askew, with the result that it was hiding very little of what it should be if he were to regain any semblance of self-control. He looked away hastily, but too late for the ogling to go unnoticed. Laura glanced down, then back up, making no move whatsoever to remedy the situation. Rather, she tossed her damp hair back over one shoulder, cocked her head to one side, and looked at him with a maddeningly unreadable expression on her neat features.   
  
“I’m guessing it’s been a while for both of us.”  
  
He nodded, running a hand through his hair in evident frustration.   
  
“The thing is... Bill... where does an eight-hundred-pound gorilla sleep?”  
  
He looked at her like she had gone crazy. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“ _Where_ … does an eight-hundred-pound  _gorilla_ …  _sleep_? Come on, you’ve heard it before.”  
  
“Anywhere it wants to,” he responded reluctantly.  
  
“Very good. And where does the colonial President sleep?”  
  
“Are you calling yourself an eight-hundred pound gorilla?”  
  
“I’m saying I didn’t have to come here, I could be just about anywhere in the fleet I chose to be, right now. And I am  _here_.” She moved a little closer to him, leaning in earnestly, using the clipped, pedantic tones that always made him notice her tongue more than was entirely safe. “So please, meet me at least halfway on this, because despite my cool façade, I’m actually feeling more than a little fragile right now. I don’t have the energy to deal with anybody else’s issues.” She sounded anything but fragile, but he could hear the ring of truth in the edgy tone, see the tension in her shoulders.  
  
“You and me, both,” he admitted, letting himself relax again. “I’ve had a tough week, too. And this isn’t exactly what I was… frak, I don’t even know what I’m saying, here. I’m sorry, anyway. Got carried away.”  
  
She giggled as she settled herself next to him, sitting facing him on her folded legs, her knees just brushing his thigh. As close as she trusted herself to sit, at that moment. He rested his hand on the nubbly terrycloth covering one thigh, tracing the wales in the cabled pattern thoughtfully.   
  
“I probably should have taken you by storm when I first came in. But the shower really had to come first.”  
  
“Yeah, I appreciate that.”  
  
“Mm-hmm. Really, I had no ulterior motive other than the shower. I wasn’t planning to make any untoward confessions at this time. You caught me with my guard down. Like a Cylon. Are you sure you aren’t a Cylon?”  
  
“That’s… uncalled for. Well, I’m back to, ‘What the hell are we supposed to do now?’”  
  
“We’re both also at, ‘This is all so sudden,’” she suggested. “But it isn’t sudden, and I think we both know that. And neither of us has the patience or, frankly, the time to try to start where we were and go from there. The cat’s already out of the bag, anyway. And we don’t know if we’ll still be alive next week.”  
  
“You’re making it sound kinda calculating.”  
  
She gave a little snort of impatience, and then bent towards him, putting one hand flat against his chest. “Then how does  _this_  sound? Yes, it’s something I’ve been dreaming about. Thinking about, actually. A  _lot_. Since long before New Caprica. And right now, I don’t care that it’s sudden, I don’t care that we’re both exhausted, I just –“  
  
“Laura –“  
  
“Don’t interrupt, Gods, this is difficult enough. I just care about getting as close to you as humanly possible and forgetting about everything else that has happened since all this started, and… I  _need_  that, and I want you, and I know you want  _me_.”  
  
“Laura –“  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
“I said it sounded calculating. I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”  
  
“I… oh.”  
  
He smiled gently, leaned forward, and kissed her very slowly and thoroughly this time, taking everything he could but giving it all right back. After a moment, never breaking contact with her mouth, he pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist. By the time they surfaced, they were both breathless, intoxicated with need, already half-insensible to their surroundings.  
  
Bill found their relative positions advantageous for two reasons. To begin with, Laura couldn’t really reach much of him, which was vital if he was to pursue even a few of his plans for the immediate future. If she started feeling  _him_  up, it would all be over. And secondly, he could reach nearly all of her, a benefit heightened by the fact that she was only wearing his robe. As they kissed again and again, his hands teased her through the rough surface, then slipped beneath to explore the soft skin of her stomach and back, the silken weight of her breasts, the sudden roughness of her nipples against his palm and thumb.   
  
Well, three reasons, really. The third was simply that having a lapful of essentially naked and very willing Laura Roslin was so far beyond his wildest hope for this evening that he could scarcely believe his luck.   
  
Unable to resist, he finally pushed the robe off one shoulder and bent his head to press kisses along her sternum and down the crest of one breast. When he paused to flick his tongue over the tight bud beneath his lips, she gasped, tightening her fingerhold on his hair.   
  
Curious, impatient, hardening uncomfortably beneath Laura’s hip, Bill pulled the loosely knotted sash free, and let the robe fall open. Greedily, he fondled his way from her waist down to her thigh, shifting his weight to let her slip off his lap; this time, when he pinned her to the couch, neither of them considered stopping to talk about whether it was too sudden.   
  
Laura managed to divest Bill of his tank top – the jacket, he had taken off himself – but grew frustrated by his efforts to avoid letting her take off his trousers.   
  
“I need those at the moment,” he insisted, sliding down out of her reach and nuzzling closer to her core. He wanted to taste her, savor her, and knew he needed all the help he could get to maintain his control. She was overwhelming his senses, her every touch and sound shooting signals straight to his groin.   
  
She was vaguely, albeit very pleasantly, surprised to discover that Bill was good at oral sex. Having already pegged him as a happy receiver of it, she had not expected to find him also good at giving it. Better than good, she amended to herself, after he did a few things with his tongue that made her legs go numb and her toes curl.  _Sweet Lords, the man could win some sort of award,_ she thought after another minute, and after that she was no longer capable of thought. His mouth and hands were steady, insistent, not just teasing but demanding, and she had no choice but to heed them; she was too tightly wound, it had been too long, and she came after too short a time, arching against his pumping fingers and suckling lips with a sweet cry of relief.   
  
The shock of her eager response, her sensitivity to his slightest movement, suddenly made him ache to feel her come around him. He kept his hand in place, two fingers tucked possessively inside her, and kissed his way back up to her mouth, relishing her obvious delight in the taste of herself on his lips.   
  
“Mine,” he said huskily once he raised his head, flexing his hand against her lest she miss his point.   
  
She slung her leg over his hip, moving her hips in time with his manipulations, and whispered her response with a rueful smile. “You just now realized that?”  
  
“Mmm, about a minute ago. I think you were screaming my name at the time, but it was hard to tell with your thighs around my ears – ouch!”   
  
Laura had meticulously singled out one of his sparsely scattered chest hairs and yanked it out with no warning; her beatific expression had never altered. “Bill… are you here to frak me, or frak  _with_  me?”   
  
“Oh, I’m here to frak you. No argument about that.” He was still employing his hand in a fairly distracting manner, and he distracted her further now by pressing the heel of his hand against her still-oversensitive clitoris. She shuddered, far from sated, and pushed her own hand down to tug insistently at his belt.   
  
“Then  _do_.”  
  
When he released her, she gave a frustrated moan, but then sat up to help when he stood to take his pants off more efficiently. They had barely cleared his hips before she was upon him, pulling the waistband of his boxers out to avoid snagging them on his cock as she removed them. It was a phenomenon that ordinarily amused her: the bounce of freedom. They always looked so… cheerful.   
  
She wasn’t thinking ‘cheerful’ as she freed Bill’s erection and took it in her hands, impetuously pressed her lips to the engorged tip, dipped her tongue delicately towards his glans. She was thinking ‘ _mine_ ,’ and ‘I  _want_  that,’ and something like ‘ye  _Gods._ ’ Her sizzling hormones were buckling under the unaccustomed strain, and she wasn’t quite sure whether she wanted to have sex with him or simply devour him whole. It felt about the same, just then; he tasted wonderful, essential, and she just wanted more.  
  
His hands were woven into her hair, and he kept her from taking him further into her mouth; he was nearly in pain with the effort to restrain himself, and the desire to let her go, to enjoy this to its completion, battled valiantly with his desire to be inside her when he came. The latter wish won out, though, however narrowly.  
  
“Laura… stop. Gods, it’s good…  _so good…_ but you have to stop.  _Now_.” He pulled away gingerly, avoiding teeth, and tipped her backward onto the couch again, sinking on top of her and groaning as her legs wrapped around his ass, her hips tilting against his groin. She sought him, found him, guided him to her entrance. When he penetrated her, she pushed upward to meet him, all too ready. The sensation as he moved deeper inside her, straining to keep himself in check, to give her time to grow accustomed to his girth… the friction was a pain too sweet to bear, but she perversely levered herself sharply towards him, until he gave in and started to thrust into her roughly, hitting bottom with each stroke. They moved in opposition, looking for their rhythm, letting it find them; Laura whispered his name and spread her legs further, feeling more than physically filled by him.   
  
She could feel herself clenching, already approaching climax again, too keyed up to stop. But when she cried out in protest, he stifled her with a kiss and kept up his bruising pace, knowing she was close.   
  
“Come,” he insisted, his voice dark with his own pending crisis. “Laura, come, I need to feel you…”  
  
“No, too soon–“   
  
But she could not have stopped herself if she had tried. The orgasm took her over, drowned her in elation she had all but forgotten, then in more than she had ever remembered, pulling tears from her eyes with its intensity. She could feel nothing but the pleasure, and Bill over her, inside her, impossibly growing harder still, then exploding within her still-shuddering confines, sending her soaring again, feeling as though she might never come down again.   
  
But she did, and felt the last of the waves wash over her, leaving bliss in its wake. And felt Bill, still quite hard, trembling as he joined her on that shore, resting over her on his elbows to spare her his weight. She traced the contour of his cheek, looking into his eyes and seeing more there than she dreamed, seeing patience and devotion and a long wait finally made worthwhile. Seeing love, and the reflection of love, still biding its time to be spoken.  
  
“That was…  _wow_ ,” she said; she could not have said what she actually felt at that moment.   
  
“Yeah,” Bill replied, still looking slightly stunned. “Damn, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”  
  
She smiled wickedly, spoke with mock sympathy. “That’s okay, I’m sure you’ll do it for a long time  _next_  time.”  
  
The patronizing pat on his shoulder was over the top; he groaned and collapsed deliberately on top of her, not letting her up until she apologized. Apology secured, he flopped to one side, hissing with the sudden cold as they separated.  
  
“Bill?” She was curled against his side now, trying to keep as much of her skin in contact with his as possible. Her hands still ranged restlessly over him, as though they had not quite finished with the rest of her body, and still needed more. She did need more; she felt she would never have enough. Now that she had started, she would never be able to stop.   
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“What the hell are we supposed to do now?”


End file.
